Rolling papers are most commonly made with wood pulp, hemp, flax, or rice straw as a base material. Some companies may use esparto, which might lead to a slightly higher carcinogen level when burned. The basic design of a single paper is a long rectangle with a narrow strip of glue or gum all along one of the long edges. Longer rolling papers are also often used to make spliffs or used for rolling longer cigarettes. Rolling papers are also called skins or rollies (a term which can also mean the hand-rolled cigarettes themselves), but the term skinning up usually only refers to the act of rolling a spliff.[1] Newer rolling papers are available in various flavors.

In the United States, Tobacconist Magazine has called roll-your-own (RYO) the tobacco industry's fastest growing segment. It estimates that 2-4% of US cigarette smokers, or approximately 2.6 million people, make their own cigarettes. Many of these smokers have switched in response to increasingly high taxes on manufactured cigarettes.[2]

In 2000, a Canadian government survey estimated that 9% of Canada's six million cigarette smokers smoked hand-rolled cigarettes "sometimes or most of the time", 7% smoked roll-your-owns "exclusively", and over 90% of rolling papers sold in Canada were for tobacco consumption. A more recent 2009 study has shown that approximately 925,000 Canadians roll their own cigarettes.[3]

According to The Publican, "Low price RYO has seen an astonishing rise of 175 per cent in [2007] as cigarette smokers look for cheaper alternatives and to control the size of their smoke".[4]Britain'sNational Health Service has reported that roll-your-own use has more than doubled since 1990, from 11% to 24%. Many of these smokers apparently believe that hand rolled cigarettes are healthier than manufactured products,[5] although it is equally possible that the increase is due to the steep rise in prices since the early 1990s to the present day.[6]

In Thailand, roll-your-own smokers have long exceeded those for manufactured brands;[7] the cheaper papers without gum are kept constantly between the fingers during a smoke there. New Zealand reported in 2005 that: The ratio of roll-your-own to manufactured or tailor-made cigarettes consumed by New Zealanders has risen over (at least) the past decade, perhaps reflecting price differences between these products, and currently approaching 50 percent overall.[8]

Consumers' switching to roll-your-own has led to a response among certain tax authorities. In the United States, Indiana and Kentucky tax rolling papers. Kentucky set its tax at $0.25 per pack (for up to 32 leaves, larger packs are taxed at $0.0078 per leaf) in 2006 despite complaints from manufacturers. Louisiana Revised Statute 47:338.261 allows up to $1.25 per pack at retail.

The FDA stated in 2011 that each and every brand (including private labels) of cigarette rolling papers sold in the USA must submit their ingredients and seek agency approval or withdraw from the marketplace by March of that year if they had not been sold in the USA before February 15, 2007.[9]

Fire-resistant cigarettes, which reduce the risk of fire from unattended cigarettes, are made with special paper that includes a plastic compound, ethylene vinyl acetate. If a cigarette made with this type of paper is left unattended, the plastic in the paper will help the cigarette self-extinguish.